Pharmacies, healthcare providers, vendors, and others are frequently required to dispose of waste articles, including containers for consumable products such as medications, vitamins, supplements, and the like. Many different container types are used to package these types of consumable products. Examples include vials, bottles, clam shells, tubes, boxes, blister packages, and other container types. These containers are typically made of, or include, plastic and have material properties ranging from stiff and rigid to pliant.
Many of these container types can include highly confidential or sensitive information. For example, medication containers used to fulfill patient prescription orders typically include important information relating to the patient. Such information typically includes patient name information, medication type information and prescriber information. The patient information provided on the medication container may reveal aspects of the patient's health status that the patient would not want others to know. The patient information is commonly printed in human-readable form on an adhesive-backed label affixed to the outside of the container or on the container itself. The patient information may also be associated with the container in machine-readable form, such as by means of a bar code or radio frequency identification tag (RFID).
Laws such as The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) require that medical records, medical billing, and patient accounts meet certain consistent standards with regard to privacy. One important aspect of HIPAA compliance relates to protection of patient privacy when it becomes necessary to dispose of containers and other articles including confidential patient information.
By way of example, a pharmacy requested to refill a patient prescription order will often be required to dispose of an empty medication container presented by the patient to the pharmacist to initiate the refill request. HIPPA compliance requires that the pharmacy completely destroy any confidential patient information associated with the empty container so that the information is rendered unuseable by others. A waste disposal solution, other than merely placing the intact empty container in a waste receptacle, is required to comply with privacy regulations.
It may also be desirable for pharmacies, healthcare providers, vendors, and others to seek creative waste disposal solutions for container-type articles in order to better comply with environmental regulations and minimize waste-disposal costs. As can be appreciated, one problem with disposal of articles such as medication containers is the volumetric bulk of the articles. Conventional disposal of these types of articles involves placing the articles in a waste receptacle to await removal by a waste-removal service. However, the bulk of these types of articles is such that the waste receptacle may be quickly filled to the exclusion of other waste material. As a consequence, additional storage space may be required to store the waste receptacles and additional costs may be imposed for waste removal due to the increased volume of waste produced. Disposal of bulky articles is not environmentally friendly because of the large volumetric landfill space required.
Various article-destruction devices have been proposed, but such devices have certain disadvantages. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 4,932,595 (Cohen et al.) is directed to a plastic article shredding device which requires the combined operation of a complex auger-type feed assembly and a granulator. The auger first shreds the article. Next, in the granulator, fixed and rotating knives coact to further cut and reduce the size of the shredded plastic articles. This arrangement, however, does not optimally reduce the size of the articles and does not appear to have the capability of completely destroying information which may be associated with the plastic articles. The required machine structure also adds cost to the device.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,520,435 (Robinson) is directed to a plastic article processing device which utilizes whips to shred plastic containers into small strips. Use of whip-type shredding devices does not necessarily ensure complete destruction of an article, such as a pliant-type medication container, together with confidential patient information associated with the container.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,957,784 (Barkan et al.) describes a glass bottle crushing system which employs a horizontally-oriented rotating bar to break glass articles falling from a chute past the bar. While perhaps suitable for destroying brittle glass articles, the rotating bar would not necessarily be effective at destroying lightweight plastic medication containers so that any information associated therewith is fully and consistently rendered unusable.
The Whitaker Datastoyer Rx Paper Shredder available from Whitaker Brothers, Inc. of Rockville, Md. is said to employ a cross-cut-type shredder to destroy prescription bottles, pharmacy labels, prescription pads and patient files. Cross-cut-type shredders require complex intermeshing cutters and other mechanical components which are unduly complex and add cost to the price of the device. And, such cross-cut-type cutters may not be suitable for destroying a full range of three-dimensional articles, including medication containers.
There is a need for an article-destruction apparatus which would be capable of effective and reliable destruction of articles, such as medication containers which are rigid or which are pliant, which would completely and reliably destroy and render unusable any information associated with the articles and containers, which would reduce waste volume, which would have a simple design, and which would be compact and easy to use.